Ontoloji tabanlı çok-etmenli sanal fabrika sisteminin tasarımı ve geliştirilmesi.

Major developments in computers and information technologies, enable industrial and mechanical engineers to establish new net based, virtual collaboration platforms for enterprises. Benefiting from virtual enterprise platform enterprises will be able to combine their resources and capabilities on project based collaborations meanwhile protect their independent mainstream policies and secure their secret information. This concept is called virtual enterprise(VE). Virtual Enterprise (VE) is a collaboration model between multiple business partners in a value chain. The VE model is particularly feasible and appropriate for Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) and industry parks containing multiple SMEs that have different vertical competencies. One of the main targets of this research is to create an Ontology based Multi Agent Virtual Enterprise (OMAVE) System to prepare an appropriate platform for collaboration between technology start-ups in techno-parks and SMEs in Organized Industrial Zones in order to produce high value added high-tech products. OMAVE aims to help SMEs to shift from classic trend of manufacturing part pieces towards high-tech, innovative and research based products. In this way and to reach this goal a new semantic data infrastructure to enhance Re-Configurability and Flexibility of virtual enterprise systems has been developed. In order to support flexibility in Virtual Enterprise business processes and enhance its integration to enterprises' available manufacturing systems (e.g. MRP) an ontology based domain model of VE system has been established. OWL DL semantic data structure of VE by defining concepts, axioms, rules and functions in VE system has been developed. TDB data store to keep VE data and information in form of triples developed. SPARQL semantic RDF query language is used to handle and manipulate data on developed system data store. This architecture supports structure flexibility for developed VE infrastructure and improve reusability of data and knowledge in VE life cycle. To establish a multi agent based partner selection platform different agent types have been developed. These agents collaborate and compete with each other to select the most appropriate partner for the forthcoming VE project consortium. The agent based auctioning platform is coupled with a Fuzzy-AHP-TOPSIS multi criteria decision making algorithm to evaluate incoming bids from agents and rank proposals in each iteration. It is also important to notice that here, agents interaction's semantic is provided by an agent ontology. This agent ontology provides concepts, properties and all message formats for agents to settle a common language in interactions between agents. Implementing concurrent engineering, collaborative design and Product Life Cycle Management (PLM) concepts by integrating Dassault systems web based CATIA/ENOVIA V6 design and PLM tools to OMAVE system. To test and verify these achievements a case study to produce a test product by using developed OMAVE tools is established. This test product manufactured by contributions of SMEs from OSTIM organized Industrial Zone Aviation and Defense Cluster.Ph.D. - Doctoral Progra

Tools for enterprises collaboration in virtual enterprises

Virtual Enterprise (VE) is an organizational collaboration concept which provides a competitive edge in the globalized business environment. The life cycle of a VE consists of four stages i.e. opportunity identification (Pre-Creation), partner selection (Creation), operation and dissolution. The success of VEs depends upon the efficient execution of their VE-lifecycles along with knowledge enhancement for the partner enterprises to facilitate the future formation of efficient VEs. This research aims to study the different issues which occur in the VE lifecycle and provides a platform for the formation of high performance enterprises and VEs. In the pre-creation stage, enterprises look for suitable partners to create their VE and to exploit a market opportunity. This phase requires explicit and implicit information extraction from enterprise data bases (ECOS-ontology) for the identification of suitable partners. A description logic (DL) based query system is developed to extract explicit and implicit information and to identify potential partners for the creation of the VE. In the creation phase, the identified partners are analysed using different risks paradigms and a cooperative game theoretic approach is used to develop a revenue sharing mechanism based on enterprises inputs and risk minimization for optimal partner selection. In the operation phases, interoperability remains a key issue for seamless transfer of knowledge information and data. DL-based ontology mapping is applied in this research to provide interoperability in the VE between enterprises with different domains of expertise. In the dissolution stage, knowledge acquired in the VE lifecycle needs to be disseminated among the enterprises to enhance their competitiveness. A DL-based ontology merging approach is provided to accommodate new knowledge with existing data bases with logical consistency. Finally, the proposed methodologies are validated using the case study. The results obtained in the case study illustrate the applicability and effectiveness of proposed methodologies in each stage of the VE life cycle

Assessing organizations collaboration readiness: a behavioral approach

Dissertation presented at the Faculty of Sciences and Technology of the New University of Lisbon to obtain the degree of Doctor in Electrical Engineering, specialty of Robotics and Integrated ManufacturingThis thesis presents an approach for assessing organizations‘ readiness to collaborate. This assessment is based in three fundamental aspects, namely (1) on collaboration preparedness, which aims at assessing whether a partner has adequate collaboration-related character traits; (2) on competencies fitness which is predominantly aimed at assessing how well an organization is able to use its competencies in a collaboration context; and (3) on willingness to collaborate, which is a concept applied to assess whether an organization is, or is not, really interested to engage in concrete collaboration opportunities. The proposed approach contributes to the formation of improved collaborative networks, increasing their likelihood of success. The principal characteristic of the model lies in the fact that it follows a behavioral perspective. As such, collaboration preparedness is based on the idea of the organizations‘ character, traits and behavioral patterns. Competencies fitness is in turn based on the so-called soft competencies, exploring the performance influences/effects of the soft competencies on the hard ones in a collaboration context. Finally, willingness to collaborate is based on the organization‘s planned behavior, attitudes and intentions that are perceived in/from a partner. The work involved in the conceptualization of readiness to collaborate includes the utilization of text data mining to discover the behavioral aspects, namely the collaboration-related organization‘s traits which are relevant for assessing collaboration readiness. Bayesian belief networks are proposed as a way to deal with the underlying uncertainty in assessing collaboration readiness. A soft versus hard competencies dichotomy is used to develop the concept of competencies fitness, proposing the adjusted competencies profile and the fitness level, as the way to assess whether a partner‘s competencies fit in a collaboration opportunity. The Theory of the Planned Behavior is adapted from social sciences and used in organizations in collaboration contexts. Various modeling experiments were performed to assist in the development of this readiness concept. The validation through some cases of partnerships is proposed to evaluate the underlying collaboration readiness assessment model

Partner selection in virtual enterprises

Tese de doutoramento. Engenharia Industrial e Gestão. Faculdade de Engenharia. Universidade do Porto. 200

Semantic adaptability for the systems interoperability

In the current global and competitive business context, it is essential that enterprises adapt their knowledge resources in order to smoothly interact and collaborate with others. However, due to the existent multiculturalism of people and enterprises, there are different representation views of business processes or products, even inside a same domain. Consequently, one of the main problems found in the interoperability between enterprise systems and applications is related to semantics. The integration and sharing of enterprises knowledge to build a common lexicon, plays an important role to the semantic adaptability of the information systems. The author proposes a framework to support the development of systems to manage dynamic semantic adaptability resolution. It allows different organisations to participate in a common knowledge base building, letting at the same time maintain their own views of the domain, without compromising the integration between them. Thus, systems are able to be aware of new knowledge, and have the capacity to learn from it and to manage its semantic interoperability in a dynamic and adaptable way. The author endorses the vision that in the near future, the semantic adaptability skills of the enterprise systems will be the booster to enterprises collaboration and the appearance of new business opportunities

Knowledge discovery for moderating collaborative projects

In today's global market environment, enterprises are increasingly turning towards collaboration in projects to leverage their resources, skills and expertise, and simultaneously address the challenges posed in diverse and competitive markets. Moderators, which are knowledge based systems have successfully been used to support collaborative teams by raising awareness of problems or conflicts. However, the functioning of a moderator is limited to the knowledge it has about the team members. Knowledge acquisition, learning and updating of knowledge are the major challenges for a Moderator's implementation. To address these challenges a Knowledge discOvery And daTa minINg inteGrated (KOATING) framework is presented for Moderators to enable them to continuously learn from the operational databases of the company and semi-automatically update the corresponding expert module. The architecture for the Universal Knowledge Moderator (UKM) shows how the existing moderators can be extended to support global manufacturing. A method for designing and developing the knowledge acquisition module of the Moderator for manual and semi-automatic update of knowledge is documented using the Unified Modelling Language (UML). UML has been used to explore the static structure and dynamic behaviour, and describe the system analysis, system design and system development aspects of the proposed KOATING framework. The proof of design has been presented using a case study for a collaborative project in the form of construction project supply chain. It has been shown that Moderators can "learn" by extracting various kinds of knowledge from Post Project Reports (PPRs) using different types of text mining techniques. Furthermore, it also proposed that the knowledge discovery integrated moderators can be used to support and enhance collaboration by identifying appropriate business opportunities and identifying corresponding partners for creation of a virtual organization. A case study is presented in the context of a UK based SME. Finally, this thesis concludes by summarizing the thesis, outlining its novelties and contributions, and recommending future research

Lean, agile, resilient and green supply chain management interoperability assessment methodology

Dissertação para obtenção de grau de Mestre em Engenharia e Gestão Industrial (MEGI)Supply Chain Management has become a tactic asset for the current global competition situation. Innovative strategies such as Lean, Agile, Resilient and Green emerged as a response, requiring high levels of cooperation and of great complexity. However, the strategic alignment of operations with partners in supply chains is affected by lack of interoperability. The present work provides a framework to enhance SC competitiveness and performance by assessing interoperable SCM Practices applied in automotive industry. Through a pragmatic interoperability approach, this methodology describes in detail the form of application using analytical hierarchical process (AHP) and Fuzzy sets as support decision making models, ensuring a systematic approach to the analysis of interoperability with appropriate criteria for assessment of situations that require high levels of collaboration between partners. Through a case study in a Portuguese automaker, it was possible to test the methodology and analyse which areas lack interoperability in the implementation of SCM practices

Role of Semantic web in the changing context of Enterprise Collaboration

In order to compete with the global giants, enterprises are concentrating on their core competencies and collaborating with organizations that compliment their skills and core activities. The current trend is to develop temporary alliances of independent enterprises, in which companies can come together to share skills, core competencies and resources. However, knowledge sharing and communication among multidiscipline companies is a complex and challenging problem. In a collaborative environment, the meaning of knowledge is drastically affected by the context in which it is viewed and interpreted; thus necessitating the treatment of structure as well as semantics of the data stored in enterprise repositories. Keeping the present market and technological scenario in mind, this research aims to propose tools and techniques that can enable companies to assimilate distributed information resources and achieve their business goals

Semantic discovery and reuse of business process patterns

Patterns currently play an important role in modern information systems (IS) development and their use has mainly been restricted to the design and implementation phases of the development lifecycle. Given the increasing significance of business modelling in IS development, patterns have the potential of providing a viable solution for promoting reusability of recurrent generalized models in the very early stages of development. As a statement of research-in-progress this paper focuses on business process patterns and proposes an initial methodological framework for the discovery and reuse of business process patterns within the IS development lifecycle. The framework borrows ideas from the domain engineering literature and proposes the use of semantics to drive both the discovery of patterns as well as their reuse